SPECIAL NOTE, SEPTEMBER 12: This Albion Area Lifelong Learners event will still be held today at 4 p.m. ET.

Tennant Hall, home to the United Methodist Church, has power and is ready to host this event as scheduled!

If you plan to attend, please travel safely.

Albion College is celebrating the 130th anniversary of the historic Alvan Clark telescope in the Brown Honors Building.

In the early 1800s, American telescope making gained a world-wide reputation for bold innovation and ever-larger telescopes. Increasingly sophisticated instruments were used with those telescopes for ground- breaking research. Much of the impetus for bigger and better telescopes came not only from college and university research astronomers but also from their prestige-seeking administrators looking to equip their institutions with impressive observatories that demonstrated their schools' progressive science departments. By the latter 19th Century, even smaller institutions such as Albion were able to take advantage of top quality home grown telescopes at reasonable prices from any of several leading makers.

Bart Fried is the founder and current President of the Antique Telescope Society and a recipient of the Society’s Newton award.